What’s the most important element of comedy? Timing. Likewise in eMarketing. That’s why we at Hootville drop our shoulders when we see eNewsletters arrive late in the traditional working day. See below.
Too late she cried. Cry earlier in the day and in the week.
The Lowdown is overwhelmingly read at work during worktime so we aim for the Lowdown to be part of people’s first download of email.
The goal is to be a part of people’s pre-work procrastination and to allow them more worktime to read our content during the day. It works. How do we know? We A/B test varying send times and check the results. Try that with mail.
Virgin clearly gets the worms with these early words.
We’ve had clients with audiences which are less clear cut. Eg: older audiences, parents or carers all of which are likely to have more varied reading times. For some of you, it would be worth asking new subscribers when they are most likely to receive (not read) your material and send accordingly. The fresher your email is in the inbox, the more enticing it is.
That’s why, 24 hours after the first distribution we resend the Lowdown to Citizens who failed to read it the first time. Same email, same recipient, different result about 20% of the time. Not bad huh? Do you resend automatically? Why not?
Also – we don’t send Monday or Friday. Monday mornings are too caught up with the return to work and Friday doesn’t allow us to resend 24 hours later. Interesting fact #2.
BTW – at least 5% of you are away at any given time rising to 15% during school holidays.